This is a backpost from july that I didn’t submit:
During the few days I spent at CKUT, I met so many people and learned a lot about the stations history and ongoing culture as a radical community radio. I was able to sit down with a few current and former station members to learn about their time at CKUT. These were oral history-style interviews, although they felt much more like conversations. Though we talked about many different things, in all these conversations, the question “why radio?” was the most fruitful. For example, I spoke with Gwen who helped start the decades-long show Amandla, which began as a way for student organizers and MTL community members to talk about South African Apartheid and combat the intense propaganda that mainstream media reproduced. I also spoke with Samaa, an Egyptian-Canadian woman who grew up amongst the strong oral storytelling traditions of Egypt alongside the government’s abuse of radio for propaganda. Samaa has been hosting shows at CKUT since 2000 that focus on Arab music and resistance. Gwen and Samaa both had their own personal histories with radio and as as radio hosts at CKUT, so despite engaging in a shared space, they each had different responses to my question of “why radio?” Although I had longer, more detailed questions, it was this one that seemed to spark the most interesting responses. Samaa responded by saying, “If you are in a clandestine movement, you don’t want to be seen you want to be heard.” And Gwen shared that the community-radio space of CKUT provided a “stimulating environment” as a gathering space and place for collaboration and learning.
Outside of these structured conversations, I enjoyed speaking with other people who work at the station, like Spencer the Production Manager who knows all about the daily operations of CKUT and whose insight gave me a sense of the station’s culture. I also got the chance to attend a press conference that another station member organized around tenants rights in Montreal. July 1 is commonly referred to as “Moving Day” in Montreal and it represents an intense time for many MTL residents who are housing unstable. Stefan and I are still trying to find a time for a conversation, but I felt very grateful to be able to attend this event as it was a great example of how CKUT truly is a shared space between so many different communities. As a community-radio, it caters to the needs and passions of its listeners and show hosts. It does not answer to corporate manipulations or even McGill’s desires (the university it was originally associated with). McGill actually “disowned” CKUT about 20 years ago, which actually gave the station much more freedom in their programming.
I will spend the next month transcribing these conversations and hopefully connecting with more station members for interviews. As of now, I am not able to speak with anyone at Radio AlHara because they are currently at low capacity for interviews, but I was luckily able to find a dissertation all about Radio AlHara and how community radio in Palestine is one among many sites of resistance within the larger struggle for Palestinian liberation.
